Despite the success of The Martian, starring Matt Damon, 21st Century Fox expects little growth in earnings this financial year as disappointing performances in its film business and an expected negative currency impact of $US350 million ($494.4 million) for the year are expected to hit earnings.

The Martian has taken in more than $US600 million in box office takings worldwide, but much of the rest of the filmed entertainment business came in below expectations with the performances of Spy in home entertainment not sizing up well against the previous year's X-Men Days of Future Past and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

"We're confident the business is on track to support our long-term objectives. However, two main factors – the continued currency movement against us and disappointing commercial results in the film business – are simply too significant for us to offset over the next six months to hit our original near-term target," Fox chief executive James Murdoch told investors on a conference call in New York.

Chief financial officer John Nallen said that in the first six months of the 2016 financial year, negative currency moves had eroded earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation by $US220 million, and he expected that figure to swell to $US350 million for the full year.

Fox chief executive James Murdoch, right, with his brother Lachlan and father Rupert. Photo: Getty Images

"It's clear that our content production businesses have underperformed our original plans, largely from the theatrical releases of most of our films so far, despite the success of The Martian," Mr Nallen said.

"Based on these principal factors and all of the assumptions in our current outlook, we now expect that our total segment EBITDA percentage growth rate for fiscal 2016 will be in the range of flat to low single digits above the $6.49 billion we reported for fiscal 2015."

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Bullish about X-Men

However, Mr Murdoch remained bullish about Fox's long-term strategy and was enthusiastic about the moves it has lined up for the second half, including Deadpool, X-Men: Apocalypse and Independence Day: Resurgence.

"If our only goal was to hit short-term targets, we'd pursue efforts like cutting programming costs at the expense of building future profits. That's not our approach. We think shareholder value is better built through long-term investment in growth. Our near-term outlook should not detract from the fact that in the first half of the year, we've accomplished much.

Fox reported revenue of $US7.4 billion ($10.4 billion), down from $US8.1 billion in the previous corresponding period, in line with market expectations.

Profit totalled $US748 million, down from $US6.3 billion in the same period in 2015. However, that quarter was affected by about $US5 billion in proceeds from the sale of Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia to BSkyB, a company representative said.

Strong performance from its cable division, which includes Fox News, helped revenue lift 9.4 per cent to US3.7 billion and its television business lifted revenue by 5.7 per cent to $US1.7 billion.

However, revenue in its filmed entertainment business fell 14.2 per cent to $US2.4 billion.

"While there was a public event with some changes that we're making at the networks group and the studios in the company there, we focus on costs across the business all the time, we haven't really quantified overall how that works, but I think it's more a [2017] and 18 and going forward to really make the business the right shape," Mr Murdoch said.

"One number that's been out there is $250 million of savings around this particular program, but these are programs that are going to be ongoing."

The cost cuts will be across all Fox's businesses, not just the studio.